


Windy City Blues

by SectoBoss



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Chicago (City), Gen, Prohibition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-04-25 14:34:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4964401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SectoBoss/pseuds/SectoBoss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prohibition-era Chicago’s a dangerous place to be for some, a city of speakeasies and shootouts. With violence on every corner, you might not think that the most dangerous trio in the city is a young Finnish hitman, his cousin the getaway driver, and a rich Swede with a briefcase full of bombs. But you’d be dead wrong.<br/>Now with illustrations by shoop!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Impressions, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> shoop from the fan-forum was kind enough to draw some scenes from this story, and even kinder to let me pop her art into this fic to illustrate it! Go check out [the rest of her stuff on tumblr!](http://verdisketch.tumblr.com/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to write the crew in Roaring Twenties attire, and this is the result... a 1920s AU in Chicago full of mobsters, shootouts, car chases and bootlegging.

_Chicago, 1927_

The city bustled under a pastel October sky. Cars ranging from clapped-out old Fords to gleaming new Chryslers rattled up and down the asphalt ribbons that flowed between the looming skyscrapers. Twin streams of pedestrians flanked them, hurrying this way and that, huddled inside thick overcoats and swaddled in scarves to keep out the autumn’s chill. From a window on the 4th floor of a nondescript office building in the middle of the city, Siv Västerström watched them go. At this height they looked like wind-up toys, little cars and tin businessmen whirring off to wherever they had to be.

Her own reflection looked back at her in the glass like a ghost. A pale, nervous face sticking out of a cheap dark suit. The clothes of someone who was always on the verge of striking it big, and the face of someone who expected they never would.

She frowned and turned away from the glass, back to face the interior of the office that she shared with her husband of eighteen years. The sign on the door said ‘Västerström and Sons, Legal Practitioners’ – although considering that their eldest was only ten and unlikely to take an interest in his father’s work, that was a bit of an exaggeration. Torbjörn had said it would make their business sound more professional and established. As best as Siv could tell, it hadn’t worked.

Torbjörn was sat at the other end of their office, behind his desk, with his sleeves rolled up, tie loosened and a cigarette burning its last into an ashtray by his side. He had a telephone jammed up against his ear and was scribbling furiously on a scrap of paper in front of him, pausing occasionally to say “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” into the phone.

Siv guessed it was Trond Andersen on the other end of the line. No-one else would be able to coax such a deferential tone out of her husband this early in the morning.

She sighed and sat down heavily behind her desk. It had seemed like such a good idea, all those years ago. She’d only been twenty, Torbjörn twenty-three, the pair of them fresh off the boat from Stockholm and looking to start a new life in America together. But money had been hard to come by in the new world, so when a wealthy industrialist by the name of Trond Andersen had approached them and offered to inject some cash into their ailing legal practice, they had seized the opportunity with both hands. Trond hadn’t even demanded repayment or interest, claiming to understand the plight of a penniless Scandinavian immigrant in the American Midwest all too well. It wasn’t until they were well and truly in his pocket that he began to ask small ‘favours’. Defend a friend of mine in court. Help me with this slightly dodgy property deal. And somehow, helping with these had slowly, over about a decade, become helping to run the massive criminal empire the man controlled under the table.

An empire that only got bigger in 1920 when the 18th Amendment had outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks from coast to coast. Suddenly, America had found itself full of thirsty people who had not a drop to drink – and Trond had stepped up to fill the void, using his credentials as a shipping magnate to import vast quantities of liquor, quite illegally, over the Great Lakes from Canada. Some of it stayed in Chicago. Some of it was boxed up and sent as far afield as New York and Los Angeles. And no matter where it went, the paperwork inevitably crossed the desks of Siv and Torbjörn. It was not an easy paper trail to follow, but if a Prohibition agent ever did…

It could be worse, she thought as Torbjörn spluttered out a final “Yes, sir” and dropped the phone down on its hook like he was worried it might burn him if he held it any longer. At least when you ran with Trond Andersen, you had protection. Capone and the others who battled for the speakeasies and black markets of Chicago against him were, in a way, rather small-time compared to Trond. Capone bought off mayors and police commissioners. Trond, with the backing of his titanic industrial enterprises, had enough money to buy a government. And the scheming old bastard probably knew enough secrets to topple five.

“That was Trond,” Torbjörn sighed as he reached down and picked up what was left of his cigarette.

“I guessed,” Siv replied. “What does he want this time?”

“We’re in trouble, Siv,” her husband said, breathing out a cloud of smoke that coiled blue in the dim light.

“In that case, I’m telling the jury it was all your idea.”

“Not that kind of trouble,” Torbjörn muttered, too worried to even crack a smile at her bad joke. “Trond’s angry.”

“He’s never happy.”

“No, but this time he’s _angry_. He’s been robbed. Capone’s men stole…” He glanced quickly at the scrap paper he had scribbled on and shook his head in disbelief. “…seven thousand dollars’ worth of bootlegged liquor from him last night.”

Siv felt something nasty crawl up her spine and the bottom drop out of her stomach. “ _How much?_ ”

“You heard me. Apparently they just turned up at one of the warehouses down by the docks and cleaned us out. Killed everyone down there and took all the booze out in cargo trucks.”

“And he’s sure it was Capone?”

“One of the guys who did it got left behind. They had to leave in a hurry when the cops showed up. Trond had him… interrogated.”

Siv shuddered. She knew what that meant. They’d probably find that man in a year or two’s time. Rotting on the shores of Lake Michigan, perhaps, or part of the concrete in a new skyscraper.

“Now Trond wants us to retaliate,” Torbjörn continued, stubbing out his cigarette. “Says we need to send a message.”

“And how exactly does he want us to do that? I’ve no intention of starting a war, Torbjörn.”

“Well unfortunately, Trond does.”

Briefly, he outlined the demands their boss had made of them. When he was finished Siv buried her head in her hands and groaned.

“This is going to take some serious muscle,” she said at last. She yanked open the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a thin ledger. “And if I recall correctly…” she murmured, leafing through it, “…yep, all the people we’d normally put on a job like this aren’t available. They’re either busy, in jail, or dead.”

“Do we at least have a safecracker on hand?”

“Normally, I’d give Agneta a call. She’s good with locks.” Siv checked her watch. “But her train just left.”

“Huh?”

“She moonlights as a stewardess on the _Twentieth Century Limited_. And it left for New York about half an hour ago.”

Torbjörn swore. “So we’ve got no-one?”

“Nope… oh, wait, hang on. There might be someone we can use.” Siv frowned and leafed through the ledger a few pages.

“Who?”

“I think the Finns are still in town.”

“Oh, Christ. You can call them, in that case. The guy always gives me the creeps.”

Siv shrugged. “He’s not too bad. Just a bit quiet. And his cousin’s friendly enough.”

“He’s nineteen, Siv! No-one should be that good at his job at nineteen!”

Siv grunted noncommittally and put the ledger down. “Regardless, they’re all we’ve got.”

“I don’t suppose either of them can open a safe?”

“Nope.”

Torbjörn furrowed his brow in thought for a second, then clicked his fingers as he got an idea. “Hang on,” he said. “Trond said he wanted the contents of the safe. He never said he wanted the safe opened _carefully_.”

Siv’s expression became very wary. “Torbjörn, you’re not suggesting…”

“Emil! He’s perfect for this!”

“He’s your nephew, for God’s sake! You can’t throw him into danger like this!”

“Oh, he’ll be fine! Especially if he’s got someone good looking after him. And you have to admit, he’s very good at opening things.”

“Yeah. Walls, if remember correctly. A few ceilings, maybe a room or two. An entire chemistry department, once.”

Torbjörn shrugged, palms-up, as if that was just a little detail. “If you’ve got any better suggestions…”

Siv knew she was beaten on this one, although God knew she didn’t like the idea. She sat back in her chair and looked out of the window, up at the spires of downtown Chicago which were lit white and gold by the morning sun.

“Fine,” she said at last. “But you can call his father, and explain why we want to send his only son to start a war with Capone’s outfit.”

 _This cannot possibly go well_ , she thought as she picked up the phone on her own desk, checked her ledger, and dialled the last known address of the Hotakainens.

 

* * *

 

_Two days later  
_

Emil Västerström had not been in the speakeasy thirty minutes yet, and already he was wondering idly how he’d burn the place to the ground.

The place was called the Kastrup Club and its one saving grace was that it opened before midday. Whereas most speakeasies in the city only flung their doors wide after sundown, the Kastrup Club was open from seven in the morning to three at night, every night. Its owner, a burly Dane by the name of Mikkel Madsen, would if asked say that he intended to cater for every kind of customer, no matter what their work hours or drinking habits. Privately, Emil thought it was so the man could get every last customer he could. The place sure looked like it could do with them.

Either that, or a spark in _just_ the right place. All that high-proof liquor behind the bar sure was flammable, after all.

Emil leaned back in his chair and blew out his cheeks idly, looking around the cramped room he was sat behind a table in. It was just like any other watering hole from here to the east coast – bar along one wall, a few tables and chair scattered around, a dance floor for the evening crowd and a piano squeezed into one corner.

There was a woman sat at the bar with flame-red hair and an expensive suit – a man’s suit, Emil couldn’t help but notice, but tailored to flatter her – who he was _almost_ certain was Sigrun Eide, the woman the police were looking for after the Sheridan Bank robbery last month. But he wasn’t going to make those kinds of accusations in public, not if half the rumours he’d heard about the woman were true. She was chatting to Mikkel quietly but animatedly, the man behind the bar listening to her with a small smile.

Emil suddenly realised that he had been staring at her and, worse still, she had noticed him staring in the mirror behind the bar. Sigrun – and it was her, he decided, she looked just like her photo on the wanted posters – raised an eyebrow at him and he quickly looked away and checked his watch in a way that he desperately hoped said “I’ve got no beef with you” and not “I’m reporting you to the first flatfoot I see.”

The hands on his watch read twenty-five to eleven. _They’re late_ , he thought indignantly to himself. Drumming his fingers impatiently on the battered tabletop, he knocked back the last of the scotch he had bought himself to calm his nerves and pulled a letter from his pocket. The corners of the paper were bent and ragged from where he had been doing this for the last hour now.

It read:

_Dear Emil  
_

_Have found a job for you. Unwise to discuss specifics in this letter. Meet your new co-workers at the following establishment. Bring a broad selection of your hobbies.  
_

_Kastrup Club, 67 West Eire Street_

_10.30 am, 10/22/27  
_

_Your beloved uncle_

_Torbjörn Västerström  
_

_P.S. Burn this letter once you are done with it.  
_

He still didn’t know what this job involved, apart from his ‘hobbies’ – a rather obvious codeword for the high-explosives that Emil had made part and parcel of his life over the last three year. And if his uncle had to use codewords, that meant the job probably wasn’t entirely legal. Not that Emil cared. The important thing was that he had to make a good first impression on his new co-workers, whoever they were, and not come across as a nervous over-eager wreck. Hence the single glass of scotch.

It was also the reason why he had dressed for the occasion. Pitch-black three-piece suit, shoes polished to a mirror gleam, a tasteful navy blue tie all tucked under a heavy overcoat that came down to his thighs when he wore it but was at the moment hung over the back of his chair. You had to look the part, Emil decided, and he hoped his part would soon be ‘demolitions consultant’ or something equally fun. He imagined something like helping cook up new explosive compounds for gangsters to use – well paid, and out of any immediate danger.

A touch of orange flame from his favourite lighter – a beautiful Nassau inlaid with pearl and silver, a gift from his parents on his sixteenth, back when they had still wanted to speak to him – and the letter was shrivelling and blackening in the ashtray next to him. He was just debating whether to light another cigarette – he had finished one a while ago but too many made him feel sick – when the speakeasy’s door swung open, letting in a gust of chilly autumn air and a few dead leaves.

Two figures were silhouetted against the morning light and as the door closed behind them they made their way inside, one almost having to drag the other. Emil squinted at them as his eyes readjusted to the speakeasy’s dingy light.

Siblings was his first guess, a man and a woman approximately his age. They had vaguely similar faces and the same strange hair colour, a sort of white-grey like winter frost on the river. The woman was short and slightly dumpy, plump without being fat, dressed in a pale green jacket and skirt. She carried a handbag on her right shoulder and wore a cloche hat on her head. Whoever did her hair had obviously been asked to give her the Louise Brooks look and an elegant bob cut peeked out from under it. She caught sight of the burning letter by Emil’s elbow, raised her eyebrows a little, and made for his table.

Trailing behind her was the man Emil assumed to be her brother. He looked a little like someone had tried to make the opposite person in every way to his sister. Stick thin, almost painfully so, with a pinched and angular face, he glared at Emil as he approached with eyes that were like shards of ice. His clothing was funereal in contrast to that of his sister, a dark grey suit beneath a heavy double-breasted overcoat that was a year or two out of fashion. A grey flat cap on his head perched atop his messy, unkempt hair. Just about the only colour on him was an oddly jaunty red tie that was loose around his neck – that and those piercing blue eyes.

_Starting early_

The woman laughed softly as they drew level with his table. “They told me we’d be meeting a bit of a firebug,” she trilled, gesturing at the smouldering remains of the letter, “but I didn’t expect you to have gotten started so soon.” She grinned and extended a cotton-gloved hand, which Emil rose to his feet to shake. “You must be Emil.” He nodded. “Tuuri Hotakainen,” she said by way of introduction. “And this is my cousin, Lalli. Lalli, this is Emil Västerström. You’ll be working with him today. Remember?”

Emil offered Lalli his hand. Lalli stared at it, then nodded imperceptibly and sat down with his arms folded.

“You’ll have to excuse him,” Tuuri said apologetically as they sat down as well. “He’s not one for conversation.”

 _I never would have guessed_ , Emil though, offering Lalli a friendly little smile. He was rewarded with the same cold stare and turned back to Tuuri, a little intimidated.

Unsure of exactly what to do in situations like this, Emil tried to make small talk. “With names like that, I’m guessing you’re both Finnish?”

“By way of Wisconsin, yes,” Tuuri admitted, taking her hat off and tossing it down onto the table. “A town called Keuruu. Don’t suppose you know it?”

Emil shook his head. “Heck, I’ve never left Chicago,” he grinned. That was a little lie, but he was unwilling to go into his past in front of people he’d only just met. “The world stops at Jefferson Park, as far as I’m concerned.”

Tuuri laughed. “Says you! But I have to say, I can’t blame you. I’ve only been to Chicago a couple of times, and it’s incredible! The buildings, the clubs, the cars, the people…” she waved her arms around a bit as if trying to encompass the magnitude of the city. “Quite a shock to a simple country gal,” she said, exaggerating her rural accent. Emil smiled and shrugged.

They talked for a few minutes more until a slightly awkward silence reared its head, and Emil decided to get down to business.

“So, about this job…” he began.

“Sssh! Not here,” Tuuri hissed, looking around. “The fewer people know about this, the better. We can discuss this in the car.”

“The car?” Emil frowned, a little confused. “Alright…”

Tuuri got to her feet and plonked her hat back on her head. Lalli stood in one smooth motion like a spring uncoiling. Emil followed, shrugging his coat on and reaching beneath the table and retrieving two suitcases he had stowed under it earlier. The ‘hobbies’ that his uncle had told him to bring.

The mid-morning autumn cold stung his cheeks as the three of them stepped out of the Kastrup Club, Emil offering a little wave to Mikkel as he left. The big Dane nodded in farewell, and Emil thought that the man was perhaps looking a little warily at his two new companions. It was hard to tell, though. The light in the speakeasy was very dim.

The club’s door opened out onto a side alley. They waded through drifts of dead leaves, litter and discarded newspapers, passing beneath the rickety iron fire escapes of dilapidated tenements, Tuuri leading, Emil following and Lalli bringing up the rear.

“I feel a bit like I’m being escorted away,” Emil joked to Lalli as they rounded a corner, twisting his head to talk over his shoulder. “You guys going to take me for a one-way ride or something?”

“Not yet,” Lalli muttered. He had an astonishingly quiet voice, Emil had to strain to hear him over the roar of Chicago traffic and the distant rumble of the trams.

“So you can speak English!” Emil cried in mock-surprise, still facing the wrong way. “I was getting worried.”

“Just watch where you’re-” Lalli started, and then Emil caught his foot on an uneven bit of ground and was nearly sent sprawling. He squawked in surprise and his suitcases tumbled to the ground as he threw out his arms to cushion his fall. His face came to within a foot of the alley’s hard concrete before strong hands grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him back upright.

“-going,” Lalli finished with a withering look, setting Emil back on his feet. The young man was surprisingly strong. Emil just blushed furiously and dusted himself off.

“Thanks,” he mumbled as he picked up his suitcases. Thank Christ he’d only brought stable compounds with him, he thought – there were enough of his ‘hobbies’ inside each to reduce him, Lalli and Tuuri to interesting red paintings on the nearby brickwork.

“If you two are quite finished, the motor’s just up ahead,” Tuuri said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder.

“Yeah. Sorry,” Emil said sheepishly. _So much for good first impressions_ , he thought miserably to himself.

They rounded the final corner together, and Emil soon forgot all about his failed attempts to look good. He looked in dismay at the heap of rust and cobbled-together parts that, in a previous life, might have been a Model T Ford.

“Doesn’t look like much, I know, but she’ll get you where you need to go,” Tuuri said blithely, walking round and slipping in through the driver’s door. “Hop in, then we can talk!”

“You mean this flivver _moves_?” Emil wondered, half to himself.

“And then some,” Lalli said coolly. He pointed to the back seat as he yanked the front passenger door open with a squeal of rusty metal. “Get in.”

The inside of the car smelled of petrol and old leather. Emil sat awkwardly on the back seat and tried not to get any of the dirt on it onto his nice suit. He was beginning to have some serious misgivings about this job. Certainly, if the people offering it drove a car like this, the pay wouldn’t be stellar.

“Okay, so, about the job – how much do you know?” Tuuri asked, swivelling in her seat to face him.

“Not much,” Emil admitted with a bashful grin. “My uncle just told me there was a job going, and a time and place to meet you. And to bring these,” he added, gesturing at his suitcases.

“And what’s in those?”

Emil’s grin became a little cocky. “See for yourself,” he said, handing one across to her. Tuuri rested it on her lap and clicked the clasps open. Her eyes went wide.

“I don’t know what any of this is, but it sure looks dangerous,” she said warily.

Emil leaned over her shoulder and pointed. “For starters, good old-fashioned dynamite. You want things to go boom, you ask a Swede.” Lalli rolled his eyes. “This here’s TNT, a few pounds of it. Should take down a decent wall or two. Those are grenades, military surplus Mark-IIs, they only brought them into service a few years ago.” He pointed at a tin that contained a strange green putty. “And this is a little something from England called Explosive 808. Plastic explosive, basically. Mould it to any shape you want, light the fuse and run like hell. Good for safecracking.”

Tuuri closed the suitcase and handed it back with exaggerated care. “I’m almost afraid to ask what’s in the other one.”

“Time bomb. Ten sticks of dynamite and a clock, in case you want to leave a nasty surprise for someone.”

There was a short silence in the car as both Tuuri and Lalli processed that information.

At last, Lalli spoke. “Tuuri,” he whispered quietly, “when you drive us to the target, please do not crash.”

Emil laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. All this stuff’s stable. You need an expert to set them off, which is where I… come… in…” he trailed off. “I’m sorry, did you just say _target_?” he asked with mounting concern.

“He sure did,” Tuuri said. “Do you have much experience with jobs like these?”

“Ahhh…” Emil frowned. “I think… I think maybe not…” This didn’t sound good _at all_. “I think maybe there’s been a misunderstanding here…”

“Let’s keep this simple,” Lalli said, staring at Emil in the car’s rear-view mirror, his icy eyes only just visible between the brim of his flat cap and the edge of the mirror. “We need you to help me blow open a safe. This safe is on the thirtieth floor of a skyscraper. The entire floor is owned by Mr Al Capone, and will be filled with his goons. We’ll probably have to kill most of them. Is this the job you thought you were doing?”

Emil went pale. “No! God, no!” he spluttered. His mind seemed to shut down at the prospect, all he could do was stare dumbly at the back of Lalli’s head. Some part of him insisted that this must all be a bad joke.

“Well, tough, because it’s the job you’re doing,” Lalli said.

Tuuri gave him a slightly apologetic look, turned round, started the car’s engine and threw it into gear. Emil sat back in his seat, head whirling and sweat starting to bead on his brow.

 _Oh, Uncle Torbjörn,_ he thought desperately as the Model T trundled down the alley and into the flow of traffic on West Eire Street, towards the towers of central Chicago. _What the hell have you gotten me into?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for part 2!


	2. First Impressions, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick semi-interlude before our crew gets down to the job at hand!  
> 

“The man’s name is Frank Nitti,” Tuuri said, fishing in her purse and handing Emil a photograph, keeping one hand on the wheel as she guided the Ford through the late-morning Chicago traffic. He took it with hands that were trembling more than he’d like and looked down at it. A man in his early forties looked up at him, with a neat little moustache and a slightly knowing expression.

“He looks more like a barber than a mobster,” Emil said, and laughed a little too much at his own joke. Lalli’s eyes bored into him from the rear-view mirror and Emil got the nasty feeling he was being judged and found very, very wanting.

_Found wanting_

“Yeah, well, don’t let appearances fool you,” Tuuri replied, swivelling the wheel briefly as she swerved out to overtake a plodding truck. Emil was flung around on the back seat and a horn blared behind them. Seemingly unconcerned that the windshield was suddenly filled with oncoming cars and buses, Tuuri just yanked the wheel hard and slotted them neatly back into the proper lane, to a shriek of tortured tyres and more screaming horns.

“They call him ‘The Enforcer’,” she continued blithely as Emil picked himself up from the footwell and Lalli just shook his head at her recklessness. “Doesn’t like to get his hands dirty himself, but he’ll sign your death warrant like he signs the cheques for dinner.”

Emil looked again at the photo in his hand. “And this is the guy we’re being sent to kill?”

Tuuri frowned. “Not exactly. Do you know the Pittsfield Building?”

At any other time, Emil would have been insulted by that question. Of course he knew the Pittsfield Building! The latest addition to Chicago’s skyline, and the tallest too, had opened just a few months ago. Thirty-eight gleaming storeys capped with a needle-sharp spire, a great gaudy pillar of limestone and marble, offices and shops, glitz and glamour. The enormous five-floor atrium was the talk of the town and, in Emil’s humble opinion, the whole thing put to shame anything those posers in New York could build.

Now, though, trapped in the back seat of a car being driven by a madwoman and speeding towards a job that was in all certainty going to get him killed – and being stared down by an assassin to boot – he was just glad that he was able to understand the question. The world seemed to have turned topsy-turvy in just a few short hours.

“Yeah, I know the Pittsfield building,” he said, not following. “So what?”

“Well, the moment it was opened, Capone bought up the entire 30th floor. No-one’s allowed up there now but his men. Frank Nitti just about runs half of Capone’s empire for him from his offices up there. And we happen to know that in his office, there’s a safe.”

Things started to make sense for Emil. “Let me guess – we’re after the money in it?”

Tuuri gave a short laugh, slipped the Ford up a gear, and grinned at him in the rear view mirror as the car surged ahead. “Ha! You think Capone keeps his money in a safe? No, the man’s a bit too smart for that. He puts his money in a bank like any businessman. That safe is full of documents – business ledgers, sales receipts, that sort of thing.”

Emil stared at her. “Why in the hell are we going after a pile of paperwork?” he cried.

“Tell me, Emil, do you know who’s paying for this job?”

He realised he didn’t. “No,” he said slowly.

“Trond Andersen.”

Now things _really_ started to make sense. “And he wants Capone’s records? So he can, what, figure out his organisation? Start a war?”

Tuuri clicked her fingers at him. “Bingo.”

Emil, if it was possible, went even paler. “We’re driving off to start a gang war?” he croaked.

“Should be fun,” Lalli muttered, and Emil genuinely couldn’t tell if the guy was joking or not.

“Lalli and I have talked it over, and we decided we’d best get this show on the road in a couple of hours. Once all the pen-pushers in the building have left for lunch,” Tuuri explained. “Fewer witnesses, fewer people getting in your way. Less collateral, too,” she added as if that was just an afterthought.

Emil ran a hand through his hair and tried to ignore that voice in his head that was telling him that he wouldn’t see the sundown.

“That gives a bit of time to kill yet,” Tuuri continued. “So… anyone fancy some lunch?”

Without waiting for an answer she span the wheel again and the Ford clattered off down a side street, the shouts of indignant motorists fading behind it.

 

* * *

 

“You know, he seems nice enough,” Tuuri said around a mouthful of hamburger, slipping into Finnish like a comfortable old set of clothes.

Lalli just grumbled something that wasn’t really words and popped another French fry into his mouth.

“Of course,” his cousin continued with just the tiniest note of exasperation in her voice, “we might all be getting along better if you stopped staring at him like you’re sizing him for a funeral suit.”

Lalli shrugged and stared out of the window of the diner Tuuri had driven them to. It was a greasy little place on a small road that branched off one of Chicago’s endless main streets. Tuuri had chosen it largely for its proximity to the city centre rather than the quality of its food. The three of them had grabbed a booth next to the window and ordered three helpings of the most American food they could find on the menu. Emil had gotten himself a stack of pancakes, Tuuri had plumped for a hamburger and fries, and Lalli had contented himself with a mug of almost dangerously strong coffee and as many of Tuuri’s fries as he could get away with stealing.

While the Finns had tucked in, Emil had just picked at his food half-heartedly for a few minutes before excusing himself and heading off to find the restroom. They hadn’t seen him since.

“You think you’ll be fine working with him?” Tuuri asked, swallowing.

“Hm. Perhaps,” Lalli murmured, reaching over and stealing one of the blueberries in Emil’s abandoned pancakes. “I’d prefer to work alone. I just hope he isn’t this weird all the time.”

Tuuri snorted with laughter. “You, calling someone else weird? Now I have heard it all.”

Lalli just looked at her.

“I’m sure you’ll get along just swell,” Tuuri said with a slight scolding edge to her words, as if berating him for his doubts. She pointed at him with a fork. “You’re just in one of your moods again. You’re always in a mood before we do a job.”

 _You try and approach my job with some good cheer,_ Lalli wanted to say. _Remember the one and only time you shot someone? You cried for a day. I think I’m doing a lot better than you in that regard, cousin_. But he kept quiet, because now was not the time to dredge up the past. With luck, that time would never come.

“He has been gone a while,” Tuuri commented after a few moments of silence. “Do you think he’s ok?”

“He might be trying to climb out of the window.”

“Heh, yeah.” Tuuri grinned, and then the grin became a frown of concern. “Hey, _yeah_. He might be, actually. He really didn’t look too hot on the idea of all this, did he?” She put a finger to her lips in thought. “You’d probably better go and check up on him,” she said at last.

Lalli gave another one of his wordless grumbles. “You go do it.”

“Lalli, he’s in the men’s restroom. I don’t _really_ have to explain to you why I can’t go check on him, do I?”

“ _Fine,_ ” Lalli huffed and scooted along the bench seat, nearly knocking off the coats that he and Emil had left lying on it due to the diner’s warmth. He got to the end, stood up and stalked off in the direction that Emil had staggered off earlier.

He really hoped that this job would go well, he thought as he reached the door to the men’s room and pushed it open. The money they were being offered was nigh-astronomical if they pulled it off – and as for the consequences of failure, well, Lalli didn’t want to think too hard about those. Suffice it to say that, when it came to failure, getting killed by a stray bullet was easily the best outcome he could dream up.

The restroom had a black-and-white-chequers pattern to its walls and floor that made Lalli’s head spin just a little bit as he walked in. His eyes flicked immediately to the room’s one window – a tiny, barred little glass square, far too small for anyone to fit through – and then the faint reek of vomit assaulted his nostrils. He scowled and looked around, down the rows of sinks and mirrors to where Emil stood at the far one, looking at his own reflection with helpless horror.

His posture – both hands on either side of the sink, slumped forward, head down but eyes up – and his distraught expression made something catch in Lalli’s heart. He took a step forward, to do what exactly he did not know, and then before he could do anything more a memory rushed up from the dark depths of his mind, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and hurled him bodily into his past like a ragdoll through a broken window.

 

* * *

 

_Sixteen-year-old Lalli Hotakainen looks in horror at his face, at the blood on his face, at the blood on his reflection in the mirror. He tries to wipe it off but there’s blood on his gloves too, so much they’re dripping, and all he does is smear that awful red slick across his mouth and nose. He gags, emits a little keening moan, and grips the sides of the sink like a drowning man grips driftwood.  
_

_The restroom of the small bar in Keuruu is a wreck. Blood and broken wood. It’s a miracle no-one heard what went on in here, even accounting for how loud the music in the bar is. It was supposed to be simple, Lalli thinks, they told him it’d be easy. No-one had explained how it would really be.  
_

_Acrid heat rises in his throat and he swallows desperately to keep his gorge down. It doesn’t work and he bends double over the sink as his stomach empties itself, retching so hard he thinks for one delirious second he might turn inside out. His cap falls off his head and slaps down wetly onto the stinking mess he’s left in the sink. He cannot breathe.  
_

_He tries to take a step back and something soft squashes under his shoe. He knows it’s a hand, the hand of the first man, the man he had caught by surprise as he washed his hands and whose throat he had opened like a letter. That man had the kindness to die quickly, although not cleanly, spewing his blood over the walls and his cheap suit as he collapsed gasping to the floor. The other man, the one with a bowler hat jammed awkwardly on his head, had been the one that fought back. The one whose face Lalli had smashed into the toilet bowl over and over and over, whose had roared and cursed and scrabbled at him even as the porcelain turned his face into a broken hollow of red pulp and white shards. The one whose hands had found Lalli’s throat even as Lalli’s blade had found his neck.  
_

_Trying so hard to ignore the corpse he’s all but treading on, Lalli staggers back towards the restroom door. He doesn’t think about what might happen to him if the people in the bar see him in this state. Or maybe he does, and doesn’t care. But before he can make the last mistake of his life the door swings open and booted feet hurry in and a strong pair of hands is backing him up against the wall.  
_

_“Lalli? Lalli! Did you… Jesus! What a mess. You ok? You hurt?” Onni’s face looms through his swimming vision, concern written across cousin’s stern features.  
_

_“You’ll be ok. You’ll be ok,” he repeats, as if unsure which one of them he’s trying to convince. “You’ll be ok. It had to happen. You’ll be ok. Jesus Christ. Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah? Can’t have the rest of them seeing you like this…”  
_

_Cold water on his face. A short walk through a hot and crowded bar, drunken faces leering at the two of them, unaware of what he’s done. Colder air outside, snow spiralling down to Keuruu from the winter Wisconsin sky.  
_

_In the days that follow, people praise his efficiency, his skill, his willingness to do what had to be done. They notice him when he walks down the street. Speak about him when they think he cannot hear. One night he overhears Onni telling Tuuri that they’re better off now. Safer. That no-one’s going to mess with them now, that it’s all been seen to.  
_

_Now_ that _was a lie if ever there was one._

 

* * *

 

Emil barely noticed as the restroom door opened and footsteps entered the room. He was too busy regretting every bad decision he’d made that had led up to this moment. A foolish love at sixteen that had caused his parents to send him away to live with his aunt and uncle – ‘for his own good’, as his mother had tearfully explained. An overenthusiastic chemistry experiment that had burned down a very expensive school. The repercussions from that had cost him dear. And now, at the end of a long chain of screw-ups, here he was. Part of the opening volley in a gang war. What was it Lalli had said? The two of them, up against a skyscraper full of hardened goons? It was impossible. They’d get gunned down before they’d taken two steps!

He groaned and sniffed away what he really hoped wasn’t a tear. All he needed now was for the Finns to catch him bawling like a baby. The smell of his vomit caught at the back of his nose and he grimaced. He’d flushed it away but the stench lingered.

He looked up, did his best to tidy himself up, turned to head back into the diner and nearly screamed in shock. Lalli was stood there, next to the door. Emil sagged against the sink behind him and theatrically clutched at his chest.

“You scared me half to death!” he cried, putting on a false smile. “Where did you learn to be so sneaky?”

Lalli said nothing. Indeed, he barely seemed to register Emil’s reaction. His expression was faraway and his eyes vacant.

“Lalli?”

That did it. At the mention of his name Lalli seemed to surface from somewhere deep inside himself. He looked around as if unsure how he had got there.

“You ok?” Emil asked.

“Hm? Yeah,” Lalli murmured. “It’s just… you reminded…” he trailed off, and seemed to collect himself. “Never mind. I came to find you. Are _you_ ok?”

“I’ve had better days,” Emil muttered.

To his astonishment, Lalli actually cracked a little smile at that one. Emil hadn’t thought Lalli was capable of laughter. Emil turned back to the mirror with a sigh. “I just don’t think I’m up to this,” he said. “I’m just some guy who loves blowing stuff up! I’ve never fired a gun, never killed anyone, never done anything like this before. And… and what the hell makes you think we won’t just get mown down the minute we step onto Capone’s floor?”

There was a whisper of footfalls and all of a sudden Lalli was sharing the mirror with him, looking at Emil’s reflection rather than the man himself. His hand twitched, rose, then fell back to his side, as if he had meant to put a reassuring hand on Emil’s shoulder but perhaps thought better of it.

“You’ll be fine,” he said softly. “When we go in there, just stay right behind me and follow my lead. I won’t let anything happen to you.” He sounded a bit like he was reading from a script.

Emil smiled wearily. “You mean that? Or is that you telling me what I want to hear?”

Again Lalli grinned, blink-and-you’d-miss-it. “With a bit of luck, you’ll never have to find out.”

There was a brief silence, and then Lalli spoke again.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got a job to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frank Nitti was a real-life mobster and Capone’s second-in-command, who took control of the Chicago Outfit once Capone was imprisoned. The Pittsfield Building is also a real Chicago building, although to the best of my knowledge Capone never had any offices there – and it never suffered anything like what’s going to happen to it in Part 3!


	3. First Impressions, Part 3

The city’s bells were chiming one and the streets were crowded with people. Businessmen clutching briefcases hurried past with tired and hungry faces, young boys shouted out the day’s headlines from beside stacks of newspapers, cars clattered down the roads and dodged between the occasional horse-drawn cart. Chicago was on its lunch break, everyone from clerks to construction workers hurrying off to find a food stand or dig into their packed lunches before the bells chimed again.

On the corner of East Washington and North Wabash, under the overhead tram lines that hung above the streets of central Chicago on their squat pillars of rusted iron, three people sat in a clapped-out old Model T Ford. Two men and a woman. Passing pedestrians didn’t give them a second glance, except for the one or two who noticed that the woman was sat in the driver’s seat and wondered vaguely what the world was coming to these days.

Inside the Ford, slumped on the back seat, Emil lit up his third cigarette of the day and looked through the window, craning his neck to take in five hundred and fifty feet of brilliant limestone and glittering windows. As tombstones went, he supposed he could do worse than the Pittsfield Building. He let out a long, slow breath, running his hand through his hair and trying to calm his nerves. It didn’t help. He took a drag on his cigarette. That didn’t help either.

In the seat in front of him, Lalli was staring out at the towering skyscraper as well. Emil could see his brilliant blue eyes reflected faintly in the windshield’s grimy glass, glaring out from under the brim of his cap. The young man was muttering to himself in a language Emil didn’t recognise. Finnish, he guessed, although he had no way of being certain. Emil watched in confusion as Lalli’s muttering seemed to take on a strange rhythm to it and he briefly placed his right hand over his chest.

He leaned forward, into the gap between passenger and driver’s seat. “What are you doing?” he asked.

He got no answer.

“What’s he doing?” he asked Tuuri, turning to her. She just drummed her fingers idly on the steering wheel.

“His thing,” she answered at last.

Emil blinked, nonplussed. “His thing?”

“Yes.”

“And… and what exactly does that mean?”

Tuuri just shrugged. “He does it sometimes. It’s fine.”

There was a brief pause as Emil digested this feeble attempt at reassurance.

“Is that it?” he asked at last, his voice rising a little in indignation. “Your cousin’s caught the crazies, and that’s fine? Nothing for me to worry about?”

Tuuri said nothing. There wasn’t much to say. She doubted Emil would believe her even if she did try and tell him what Lalli was doing.

Emil sat back heavily onto the Ford’s back seat and took a long drag of his cigarette – long enough that Tuuri, watching him in the rear-view mirror, briefly wondered whether he was going to try and smoke the whole thing in one go. A train rumbled along the tracks overhead, causing the tracks to creak and groan. A small part of Emil almost hoped they’d collapse on them as he let out a long, slow breath, but whoever had designed the elevated lines had done their job properly. The noise of the train faded away as it headed north towards State-Lake Station.

The noise of the train seemed to snap Lalli out of whatever reverie he’d gotten lost in. His eyes refocussed and he rolled his neck as if to get some stiffness out of it.

“All done,” he said quietly, stretching a little and moving to open the door next to him. “Let’s go.”

“I’ll be right here,” Tuuri said to him, with a little nod and a smile. “Good luck.”

Lalli mumbled something that might have been a thank-you and stepped out into the chilly Chicago afternoon. His stomach churning, Emil followed, lugging his suitcases out onto the sidewalk and shoving the door closed with his foot. He had barely regained his balance before Lalli darted off, slipping through the traffic and the people and clearly assuming Emil would be able to keep up.

Emil swore under his breath, and followed.

 

* * *

 

A few minutes later, a casual observer would have been hard pressed to see anything out of the ordinary about the two young men who walked through the great glass and wooden doors of the Pittsfield Building and into its cavernous atrium.

Certainly, there was nothing about their appearance that hinted at what they had planned. One, tall and thin, might be a telegram boy, here to deliver a message. In a way, that was true. The other, slightly shorter but much better built, wore an expensive three-piece suit under an overcoat of his own and carried a briefcase in each hand. Probably a clerk, new to the job, looking to make their career in an office somewhere in the building’s maze of floors and staircases. Again, in a way, not far from the truth.

The two of them fought their way through the hordes of businessmen around the doors and for a second the lunchtime crowds threatened to sweep them right back out onto the pavement outside. Eventually they barged their way through and popped like corks from champagne bottles into the atrium.

Lalli looked around for a minute as he waited for Emil to catch up. He had long since learned the knack of slipping through crowds, ducking and weaving in between people with the grace of a fish swimming upstream. Judging by the sounds coming from behind him, Emil had not mastered that art. There was yet another _thud_ of bodies colliding and a muffled curse wafted over the crowd. Lalli didn’t bother to glance back. Instead he just stared in something approaching amazement at his surroundings. He had seen the diagrams of it, of course, the architect’s drawings and the floor plans. He and Tuuri had spent most of the day before poring over them and mapping out his plan of attack. But to actually find himself stood in the middle of it was something else entirely.

It was, he thought as more of Emil’s apologies rang out behind him, as if someone had decided to build a temple to money. A great, soaring vault of marble, brass and stone carvings, filled to the brim with shops and stores. Five airy storeys lit by a chandelier the size of a small car that hung in the middle of it all like an art deco sun. Some people would have found it beautiful, even awe-inspiring. All it inspired in Lalli was a mild feeling of claustrophobia.

“Pretty impressive, huh? You won’t find anything like it in New York, that’s for sure,” Emil said as he at last caught up with Lalli. He stopped to catch his breath, and was about to say something else about the pride of Chicago before Lalli wordlessly started marching off again, dodging his way effortlessly past oncoming people towards a large hallway that branched off, away from the building’s front doors.

“Oh, for-” Emil gasped, and trotted after him. “Hey, wait up! Slow down! God damn it…”

At last Lalli stopped again, standing casually next to the archway that connected the hallway to the atrium. Emil set his briefcases down next to him when he finally caught up again with an air of finality and a look that said _if you run off again, I set these to blow._

Lalli looked idly down the corridor for a second, and then turned back to Emil. He leaned in and lowered his voice slightly, and Emil had to strain to hear him over the sounds of the crowded atrium.

“These are the elevators,” Lalli said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You see the dog leg the hallway takes?” Emil looked over Lalli’s shoulder. The corridor took a sharp right turn at its end, disappearing round a corner. He nodded. “At the end of that,” Lalli continued, “are three private elevators that only go to Capone’s offices. Express speed up to the 30th floor. One of those is our ticket in.”

“Are they guarded?” Emil asked nervously.

Lalli looked at him as you might look at a simple child. “No,” he drawled, “Mr Al Capone operates an open-door policy. Of course they’re guarded. Two men, at least. We’ll have to get past them first.”

Emil gulped.

“Don’t worry,” Lalli deadpanned, “that’s the easy bit. The hard bit is everything else. What did you bring?” he asked, nodding at the suitcases Emil carried.

It took Emil a few seconds to realise he’d been asked a question, he was so busy staring down the corridor. “Huh? Oh, everything I showed you in the car,” he said at last.

“Good.”

Emil swallowed awkwardly and shifted his weight from foot to foot.

Lalli gave him a look. “You ready?” he asked.

Emil blinked and let out a ragged breath. “Yeah,” he said at last.

“Liar,” Lalli smirked. “Come on, then.” And with that he span on his heel and marched off down the hallway, past the rows of chromed elevator doors, Emil trailing behind him with a look on his face that said he would gladly be anywhere on planet Earth but right here.

They rounded the corner together and Emil nearly stalled at what was waiting for them. Maybe thirty feet of corridor, three elevator doors arranged in a U-shape at the far end – and two very tough looking characters stood on guard, shoulder-to-shoulder and blocking almost the entire corridor. They looked to Emil like someone had shaved a pair of bears and forced them into ill-fitting suits. He mentally compared their frames to Lalli next to him. It was like two oaks against a sapling.

“Stay behind me, watch for anyone coming up behind us,” Lalli whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

Before Emil could ask what he should actually _do_ if someone came up the corridor after them, they had reached the two goons and everything happened very quickly after that.

“What do you want?” one of the men demanded, folding his arms.

“Message for Mr Nitti!” Lalli said in a cheerful, just-doing-my-job voice that sounded so at odds with his character Emil looked at him in surprise. For just the tiniest second the men dropped their guards, confident that they could easily take this frail boy if needs be.

It was all Lalli needed.

His hand shot to his trouser pocket and then up towards the first man. He moved so fast that all Emil saw was a blur and a metallic glint. All of a sudden there was a knife buried in the man’s throat, which he clutched and clawed at as he toppled to the ground, a look of immense surprise just starting to form on his face. The other man had just enough time to reach inside his jacket and open his mouth to shout out but in a second Lalli had wrenched the knife free of the first man’s neck and turned it on the second. They collapsed almost in unison with quite gurgles and a pair of heavy thuds.

The whole thing took maybe five seconds.

Lalli bent down and wiped his knife clean on one of the dead men’s suits. He straightened up and turned to Emil, who was staring in shock at what had just happened.

“See?” he said. “Easy bit.”

Emil swallowed. He watched as a small tide of red slowly spread across the expensive carpet towards him, engulfing the gold and blue patterns and replacing them with a uniform lake of blood.

There was blood on Lalli’s face too, he noticed as he looked up, spattered across his cheek. It took Emil a panicked second to reason out that there was no way it was Lalli’s blood. He was about to tell him, but then his stunned mind recoiled at the idea. What was the etiquette for telling someone they had blood on them? Was there some kind of discrete signal hitmen gave each other? Or did they just not care?

Fingers snapped within an inch of his face and he jerked back into the here and now. Lalli was looking at him with something that wasn’t quite exasperation but wasn’t a million miles from it either.

“Emil? _Emil._ Don’t go screwy on me, Emil. You bring that time bomb?”

“Um… yeah. It’s this one,” Emil said, lifting the briefcase in his left hand a bit. Maybe if he just sort of pointed at the blood, Lalli would realise…

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You… you’ve got red on you…”

“What?”

Emil just awkwardly indicated on his own face where the blood was on Lalli’s. Lalli scowled in confusion, put his hand to his cheek and rolled his eyes when it came away crimson.

“It’s okay, I think I’ve got a handkerchief…” Emil said.

“Emil,” Lalli said, in a level tone of voice that had an undercurrent of fraying temper, “listen to me. Forget the blood. There’ll be more anyway. Understand?” He fixed Emil with a scowl that he hoped would snap him out of whatever daze the death of the two goons had sent him into.

At the sight of Lalli glaring daggers at him Emil seemed to emerge from his stupor. He nodded briskly.

“Good. Now, that bomb. Set it for forty seconds,” Lalli commanded, hoping an authoritative tone would keep Emil in the here and now.

“Why?”

Lalli had come up with this plan on the drive over here and privately gave it a fifty-fifty chance of working. That didn’t faze him much, though. He’d worked with worse odds before.

“Because it takes the elevator thirty-five seconds to get to the 30th floor,” he explained. He wasn’t sure why someone had scribbled that little titbit of information on the Pittsfeild Building’s blueprints that he and Tuuri had pored over yesterday. But he was glad they had. “From where these elevators stop to Frank Nitti’s office door is just a few feet of corridor.”

Emil looked up and down the hallway they were stood in, trying not to notice the bodies, imagining it replicated thirty floors above their heads. A blast in the elevator, reflected back off the walls and out down the corridor, would wreak untold havoc.

“According to the blueprints, Mr Nitti’s got some pretty strong locks on his door,” Lalli said, marching over to the elevator doors that faced the length of the corridor and jabbing the button. “I hope your bomb is stronger.”

For the first time since Tuuri had explained the job to him, Emil grinned.

 

* * *

 

Paul Ricca had been born in the slums of Naples and barely a day went by when he didn’t thank God that he’d gotten out of that city.

It had not been easy. Born Felice DeLucia in a one-room apartment shared by three families, he had taken to the city’s underworld like a duck to water. He’d clawed his way up the ranks, one body at a time, slowly graduating from expendable foot soldier to a trusted right-hand man. And then, one dusty summer’s day just a few months after the war in Europe had ended, he’d messed up his orders and killed the wrong man. After that his bosses suddenly didn’t know who he was any more and Naples was a very dangerous place for him to be.

So he’d gathered his meagre savings and gotten a boat to New York and a train to Chicago and now, five years later, here he was guarding the second-in-command to Mr Al Capone himself. He’d changed his name to something more American, he’d won the confidence of Mr Nitti, he’d made a name for himself in the Chicago Outfit. He had a house now, and a car, and a radio set and maybe if God was willing a girl who might say yes when he plucked up the courage to ask her. For him, the American Dream really had come true, albeit in an unorthodox way.

He leaned back in his chair outside Mr Nitti’s office and smiled to himself. Inside he could hear his boss boasting to someone on the phone about the liquor job they’d pulled off a few days ago. Seven thousand dollars of liquor and the Scandinavians left footing the bill. That’d show that wizened old bastard Andersen who _really_ ran this city.

It was a few seconds before he noticed that the dial on the elevator opposite him, thirty feet down the corridor, had started to move. Its brass dial counted up the floors. _One, two, three, four_ …

He frowned and got to his feet. Normally the guys downstairs were meant to buzz through on a small intercom next to the doors before they let anyone up. No-one had.

_Twelve, thirteen, fourteen…  
_

Ricca hadn’t survived thirty-five years on dumb luck. Something was off here. He hurried down the corridor and stabbed the button down. “Luca, Mike,” he said into it, “have you guys sent the elevator up?”

_Eighteen, nineteen, twenty…  
_

No answer from the intercom. Ricca stepped back, reaching for the pistol he kept in a shoulder holster.

_Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six…  
_

Aiming the gun at the doors, he looked back over his shoulder. The 30th floor was almost deserted, most of Capone’s workers had left for lunch. “Hey!” he called anyway, hoping someone could hear him. “I need help here!”

_Twenty-nine, thirty.  
_

The doors slid open with a jaunty little _ding!_ Ricca was left staring not at a set of thugs brandishing Tommy guns, as he had expected, but a lone briefcase.

He also noticed that the elevator to his left was also counting the floors. The angle of the corridor had kept the dial hidden from him until he was almost on top of it. _Twenty-two, twenty-three…_

Paul Ricca had just enough time to think that maybe he should have stayed in Naples after all.

 

* * *

 

Lalli had opened his overcoat and was just pulling a gleaming Colt automatic from a holster tucked against his ribs when the bomb went off.

He felt it before he heard it, as if a giant had snuck up behind him and slammed a sledgehammer into his chest. His vision blacked out for a second and his head reeled. The force snapped his teeth together and he tasted blood as he bit his tongue.

The sound came a split second later, a roaring crash, a deep bass explosion that rattled the elevator he and Emil were in and left his ears ringing.

Lalli waited a second for his hearing to come back and checked the dial above the elevator doors. Good. They were still climbing.

He thought he heard a metallic shriek in the distance, tortured steel descending past them. The other elevator, wrecked beyond repair, hurtling back down to the lobby? Maybe. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that any second now the doors in front of him would open and anyone who that bomb hadn’t killed was going to be very, very angry at him and Emil.

There was a fizzing crackle from above their heads and suddenly they were plunged into darkness. The elevator’s electric light, pulverised by the blast, had just given up the ghost. All of a sudden, Lalli couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

That didn’t matter either.

To his right he heard Emil give a little whimper. He ignored him. Instead, he closed his eyes – although it was so dark it made no difference – took a deep breath, and opened them again.

He could see perfectly. The elevator’s interior shone as if in broad daylight, washed in a cold blue light, like he was looking through tinted spectacles. He glanced over at Emil, who was fumbling around in what was to him still total darkness.

The elevator slowed to a halt as the dial above the doors hit thirty. Its gleaming brass doors slid open with a jaunty little _ping_. Lalli stepped out, raised the gun in his hands, and got to work.

 

* * *

 

It was like stepping out into hell, Emil thought as the doors opened and he collapsed out of the elevator, into a choking quagmire of smoke and dust. Air buffeted his hair as something rushed past him – Lalli, dashing out and into the murk – but he didn’t pay any attention. He was just so glad to be out of the pitch-black confines of the elevator. When the light had gone he’d been convinced for a second that he’d died without realising it and this was the afterlife, just featureless dark forever – but the 30th floor of the Pittsfield Building was hardly an improvement on that.

The bomb had worked, Emil noted distantly, and like everything he built it had worked perhaps a bit too well. He squinted out into the thick haze that filled the air, peering down the corridor. It had probably been a nice corridor once, tasteful cream plaster on the walls, potted plants on gold-filigree tables, paintings on the walls, lamps embedded in the ceiling. All that was gone now. Plaster had been blasted out of the wall in great ugly chunks and what was left was scorched black. The lights had been obliterated and their glass crunched underfoot. To his left was a gaping hole at the end of the corridor where the elevator that had carried the bomb had tumbled back down, two buckled brass doors lying on the floor next to it.

There was something that looked like a ragged suit filled with half-a-crate’s-worth of crushed tomatoes lying next to the door, and Emil looked away from it before he could see what it had actually been.

He couldn’t see ten feet down the corridor, he realised as he turned away from the elevator shaft and staggered towards Nitti’s office, trying to find Lalli. The amount of dust in the air was unbelievable. His feet caught on a chunk of rubble and he tripped, crashing down amongst the ruins of a potted plant.

“Lalli!” he cried, staggering to his feet with clumps of soil in his hair. “Lalli! Where the hell are you?”

From up ahead there came the roar of a gun, almost as loud as the bomb. Emil yelped and ducked down. The muzzle flash flared magnesium-white thorough the haze, like lightning in a thundercloud. For the briefest moment Emil thought he saw two figures silhouetted by the flash, one standing with a gun raised, one toppling backwards to the ground.

“Lalli!”

Another gunshot, then two more in quick succession. Someone screamed.

“Lalli?”

Emil couldn’t tell if had actually gone silent on the 30th floor or his tortured ears had just given up. He shook his head and cupped his hand to his ear, trying to hear something, anything.

A shadow moved in the dust. Emil was about to shout out when a fifth gunshot reverberated around the corridor and the shadow fell forwards, close enough to Emil for him to see who it was. A man he didn’t recognise, he saw with some relief. A bullet had neatly carved him a new eye socket.

More shapes in the murk and then all of a sudden Lalli was there, striding back down the corridor towards him, covered in dust and dirt and a few more flecks of blood, smoke curling lazily from the muzzle of the Colt in his hand. Emil looked up in relief at the sight of him, and nearly screamed when he saw Lalli’s eyes.

They were blue, but not the blue they had been before, not the cold, distant icy blue but a deep bright blue that shone like there was a bulb behind them. The blue of electric sparks or butane flames. A powerful, angry blue that stained the dusty air in front of them, leaving beams in the air like flashlights. Emil’s mouth fell open in horror and he took a faltering step back.

Lalli blinked, quickly, and the light was gone. His eyes went back to how they’d always been.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah…” Emil said faintly, wondering if it had been his imagination. He pushed it to the back of his mind. They had bigger things to worry about.

“Come on then,” Lalli said, turning and hurrying off down the corridor. Emil trotted after him, picking his way over rubble and bodies. “They’re all dead,” Lalli added over his shoulder as Emil paused at yet another corpse at his feet. “Don’t worry.”

 _Don’t worry, says the guy who’s killed six men twice his size,_ Emil thought sarcastically to himself. He checked his watch. _In less than five minutes, no less!  
_

“How long do we have?” he asked Lalli as they reached a door. A brass plaque next to it read _F. Nitti, Accounting_. The glass in the door had been blown inwards by the force of the blast and Emil thought he could hear quiet whimpering coming from inside.

“Not long,” was Lalli’s unreassuring answer as he pushed the door open, his gun at the ready.

They piled into the room almost in unison, Lalli swinging the gun round to cover the corners and Emil diving for cover underneath a small table. He stayed under there while Lalli swept the room, and when after a few seconds there had been no gunshots he popped his head up and looked around cautiously.

Two sets of eyes were watching him in a mixture of confusion and amusement. One belonged to Lalli, the other to the man from the photograph Tuuri had handed to him a few hours ago. Lalli was holding his gun to Nitti’s head, who in turn was clutching his cheek where a splinter of glass had cut it as his door was blown in by Emil’s bomb.

Emil blushed slightly and crawled out from under the table. “What’s the combination?” Lalli demanded of Nitti as Emil got to his feet and awkwardly dusted himself down.

“What?” Nitti asked, feigning confusion.

“To your safe,” Lalli snarled. “ _What’s the combination?_ ”

“I don’t have a safe,” Nitti said. “I’m just a businessman. Who the _hell_ are you two?”

Lalli hissed in annoyance and marched over to the wall. Keeping the gun trained on Nitti, he yanked an expensive-looking paining down from its hook, revealing a gleaming steel door with a very large combination lock built into the front.

“There’s your safe,” he growled. “Last time. What’s the combination?”

Nitti just shrugged, an infuriating little smile on his face. Lalli wasn’t entirely surprised. He’d figured it would take more than the threat of death to get Capone’s second-in-command to betray his boss.

“Fine,” Lalli sighed. He stepped away from the safe and pointed at Emil. “You, get this open.” He didn’t think it was a good idea to use names around Nitti. Trond didn’t want the man dead, and Nitti would sure as hell be remembering what he and Emil said to each other. “And _you_ ,” he gestured at Nitti with his gun, “you stay right there.”

Emil scurried over to the safe and undid the clasps on his explosives briefcase. Quite frankly it was a miracle he hadn’t dropped the damn thing over the course of the last few minutes, he thought to himself as he opened a large tin of what looked like green putty.

_Plastic Explosive 808. Handle with care._

“You guys are going to want to stand back,” he called over his shoulder as he started smearing the sticky substance over the hinges of the safe.

 

* * *

 

There was a crowd of people around the doors of the Pittsfield Building, a mix of terrified office workers fleeing what sounded like the outbreak of another world war and curious pedestrians craning their necks up to where a thin streak of smoke was leaking out of a 30th floor window.

Tuuri watched them from the Ford and chewed her lip nervously. Lalli and Emil had not been gone a worryingly long time yet, but from the sound of things something heavy was going down up there. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel nervously and clicked her tongue. Already she could hear the faint ring of police sirens in the distance.

“Come on, guys, get a move on,” she muttered under her breath. If the law got here before they got out, it’d complicate matters. And that was putting it mildly.

Tuuri was just wondering whether she should pull the Ford up closer to the building when all hell broke loose.

Without warning an enormous fist of smoke and rubble punched its way out of the side of the Pittsfield Building, billowing up and out into the blue sky. The sound of the blast followed half a second later, a dull _crump_ that echoed around the streets of Chicago. A shower of broken masonry and glass pattered down to street level and Tuuri heard shouts and screams as people dashed for cover.

For a second, Tuuri just sat in shock, her mouth gaping as she looked up at the hole that had replaced one of the 30th floor windows.

“ _Mita vittua!?_ ” she cried, not even bothering to swear in English. “Oh you have _got to be kidding me!_ ”

Well, if the cops weren’t on their way before, they sure as hell were now, she thought madly to herself as she started the Ford, threw it into gear and started shunting her way through the fleeing crowds towards the Pittsfield Building’s doors.

 

* * *

 

Emil was very glad he couldn’t speak Finnish, because if he could, he’d be able to understand what Lalli was saying.

They burst out through the Pittsfield Building’s doors and into the dim sunshine of Chicago, both of them panting for breath. A few onlookers stepped back in shock at the sight of them. Emil couldn’t blame them. He supposed that the pair of them were quite a sight – two young men in tattered, scorched suits, wild of hair and eye, one of them guiltily clutching a battered briefcase and the other snarling to himself in what must sound to most Americans like tongues rather than any actual language.

It took him a moment to get his bearings. He turned to Lalli, about to ask _what now?_ , and then he heard a sound that made his heart sink. Sirens. Loud and getting louder. Getting closer.

But then the sirens were drowned out by an engine’s snarl and the Model T pulled up to the curb, scattering the few pedestrians who had bravely decided to stand close to a building that was still shedding brickwork and glass like a moulting animal. Lalli shoved Emil into the car’s back seat with both hands before dashing round and slipping into the passenger seat.

“What the hell happened in there?” Emil heard Tuuri yell as he clambered out of the footwell and onto the back seat.

“Later! Go!” Lalli yelled. Ahead of them, in the distance, a pair of police cars swerved around the corner and began making their way up the street towards them. Tuuri swore and jammed her foot down on the gas. Swivelling the wheel hard, she skidded the Ford around, pointed it down the length of East Washington Street, and floored it.

The acceleration punched Emil back into his seat and he yelped as the Ford surged forwards like God himself had kicked it up the backside. If he’d looked back, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d seen flames coming from the exhaust pipe.

“Did you at least get what we came for?” Tuuri yelled over the roar of the engine – and just whose idea had it been to put what sounded like a V8 inside this rustbucket, Emil wondered – as the shops and tenements flashed past them so fast they blurred into one.

“No!” Lalli shouted back.

“ _What?_ Oh, no, no, Lalli, what the hell _happened?_ ” Tuuri moaned in horror as she turned a sharp left onto LaSalle, the old brick buildings of central Chicago whipping by. She took the corner so fast the Ford briefly tilted onto two wheels and Emil was smacked hard against the window.

“He blew the safe,” Lalli snarled, glaring back at Emil who was rubbing his cheek with a dazed expression. “And everything in it, too. Hell, he blew the whole damn room! There was nothing left to take!”

Tuuri shook her head in despair. “Oh, Trond’s going to be mad at us!” she said.

Lalli said nothing, glowering out of the window at the city beyond, wondering what would happen if push came to shove and a displeased Trond Andersen decided that the pair of them were no longer worth his time.

Behind them both, Emil buried his face in his hands and let out a long groan. _Chalk up another screw-up_ , he thought bitterly, as the Ford barrelled down the last few streets of Chicago’s centre and into the relative safety of midtown.

 

* * *

 

_Later that afternoon  
_

“Hello, Västerström and sons legal-”

“Torbjörn.”

A gulp. “Trond! So lovely to hear from you-”

“Save it. I’ve heard the news.”

“Umm… and which news would this be… exactly?”

“ _The_ news. The Pittsfield Building attacked, its 30 th floor in ruins. The mayor and the chief of police are promising a city-wide manhunt for those responsible. At Capone’s insistence, no doubt.”

Silence on the other end of the line, waiting for the axe to fall.

“So you have some paperwork for me, Torbjörn. Capone’s legers and books, like I asked?”

“Not… not exactly…”

“Oh?”

“Well, you see, Trond, when Emil opened the safe, he may have used just a _smidgen_ too much explosives, and-”

“So you’ve got nothing for me.”

Another silence.

“Well, Torbjörn, I will have to take that into consideration.”

And another gulp, barely audible over the crackle of the phone connection. When Trond Andersen ‘takes things into consideration’, it’s bad news for all involved.

“But, I will also have to take other things into consideration as well.”

“Such as?” A definite note of hope.

“Well, Torbjörn, only this: we don’t have that paperwork, but now neither does Capone. I doubt the man was smart enough to keep copies. He’s ruling his empire with one hand behind his back now.”

“I suppose…”

“Also, I suppose I mustn’t be too disappointed in the performance of your employees. You sent in three people with a car, a gun and a bomb between them. And they not only survived, but delivered a high-profile blow to Mr Capone’s outfit to boot.”

It would be a cold day in hell before Trond Andersen ever uttered the words “I’m impressed”, but the sentiment was there.

“All in all, not a bad effort, Torbjörn.”

“Seriously? Ah, I mean, thank you! Thank you very mu-”

“Keep those three around. I think I will have need of them again before very long. Goodbye.”

In his mansion on the outskirts of Chicago, Trond put the phone down before Torbjörn had the time to stammer out a goodbye. He stood slowly and looked out of the window of his study, across the manicured mansion lawns and the acres of private woodland that the distant towers of Chicago peeped over the top of like curious neighbours.

When he had stolen from him, Capone had fired the first shots in this war. But Trond Andersen would fire the last.

 

* * *

 

_Three days later  
_

In a grimy hotel room that could be anywhere in the city, a young woman with white-grey hair puts a phone down and grins at her two roomates.

“Pack your things and get your glad rags on, fellas. Trond’s got another job for us.”

One of them just nods, the other knocks back a glass of scotch and marvels at the turn his life has taken.

Lalli shoves the clip into his Colt with a satisfying metallic clack and tucks it into the holster under his arm. Emil closes the clasps on a briefcase with enough ordnance in it to win a war. Tuuri spins a set of car keys on her index finger with a cheerful grin. They leave the room together, walking three abreast down the corridor, out into the Chicago sun.

Here we go again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! That took longer than expected. Well, that's the end of this AU... for now. I do have ideas for several more adventures in 20s Chicago for our crew, but they'll have to wait until I can find the time to write more.


End file.
